Struggling pupils to get '3 Rs' help

Specialist one-to-one tuition is to be offered to pupils struggling with the 'three Rs', ministers have announced

With official figures last month showing one in five 11-year-olds failing to reach the expected standard in English and maths, early intervention projects have been earmarked by the government as the best way to reverse this trend.

Under the proposals, funds of £169m will be allocated to the teaching provision over the next three years, which will benefit 23,500 pupils initially, rising to 100,000 by 2011.

Targeting the problem will be the Every Child a Writer scheme, designed to focus on seven- and eight-year-olds with the worst attainment in terms of writing.

Pilots of the initiative will take place in nine areas, encompassing 2,500 children from 135 schools.

Schools secretary Ed Balls said: "We cannot sit back and accept we can do no more to stop children falling behind year after year.

"By intervening early and using the kind of personalised tuition and support through trained teachers that parents want, we're on the verge of something truly exciting happening in our classrooms which is supported at home."

As well as Every Child a Reader, the Every Child Counts initiative is to be rolled out and will target the bottom performing five per cent of pupils in maths at Key Stage 1 and will be piloted in 21 regions.

 

Stakeholder Response: National Union of Teachers

Commenting on the government's initiative to help struggling pupils with the three Rs, Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Europe's largest teaching union, told ePolitix.com: "The government's one-to-one reading, writing and mathematics schemes are welcome but they must be the first step not the last in individual tuition.

"Every teacher knows that there are children in their classes who could benefit from one-to-one tuition at critical times in their school lives.

"Schools have long needed sufficient qualified teachers to enable personal tuition to be focused on those children who may have learning blocks or who, perhaps because of home circumstances, lack their class mates' confidence to learn".

Stakeholder Response: Institute of Education

Chris Husbands at the Institute of Education, University of London told ePolitix.com: "This initiative has enormous potential. The evaluation of pilot activity carried out by the Institute of Education suggested that sustained, structured and intensive support for struggling readers had impressive impacts – children completing the 20-week pilot programme progressed at up to four times the usual rate.

"More generally, it makes sense to focus spending and intervention on the most demanding and disadvantaged pupils and to do this in an intensive, individualised way.

"In this sense, Every Child a Reader is consistent with government's aspirations to move towards personalised provision of education in which support is provided in direct proportion to need.

"Interventions with the most demanding five per cent of learners will not only pay dividends in terms of their progress but – and this is a persistently challenging issue – release teacher time to focus on the needs of other learners.

"Everything we know about educational change and innovation suggests that it is at the point of transition from the pilot to mainstream stage that innovation struggles: early benefits can wash out, and it is easy to underestimate the scale of support needed to ensure success.

"If Every Child a Reader is going to achieve its potential it will need consistent long-term support and investment."